The Terminator meets his match

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |LOS ANGELES.
The Terminator, who stormed into
Sacramento vowing to throw out the
rascals who broke California, has met
his match. She looks like his wife.

The deal that put a $15 billion bond
issue on the ballot as the solution to
the state's money mess may be the
cure for what ails California. Or it may
just be more of the hair of the
ravenous dog that threatens to eat the
nation's largest state. Whatever. Maria
Shriver's getting the credit is all the
buzz.

It mostly depends on what the
meaning of the word "credit" is, of
course, because to get the votes to
put the bond issue on the ballot next
March, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
had to dispense with the cap on future
spending his fellow Republicans
demanded as the price of their support.
When the cap went, so did the
Republicans.

The state Senate agreed to put the
measure on the ballot by only a single
vote, and all but two of the votes were
cast by Democrats determined to
protect their belly-busting appetites.

The deal, praised by the Democrats
who couldn't believe their good fortune,
was dead until Maria Shriver
resuscitated it with a blitz of the
legislature and the help of a liberal
Republican or two.

At one point, when the deal had
begun to suffer the first stiffening of
rigor mortis, she even rushed to
Sacramento to make a speech scolding
legislators, a la Hillary Clinton. "I say
that if some of these legislators were
children," she said, "we would give
them a 'time-out.' We would teach
them that, with every person, you can
find common ground; that you should
play nicely with them, work to a
common goal and work it out."

All it took to make the legislators
"play nicely" together, like children threatened with a nice
spanking, was a village of bullying Democrats. With time
running out before the deadline imposed by state law for
getting the bond measure on the ballot, the Democrats, led
by the powerful state Sen. John Burton, employed an
updated version of the hoary threat, beloved of big-spending
city-hall pols everywhere, to close the orphanage: If the
Republicans insisted on limiting by law future spending  just
the sort of blow-the-budget spending that got California in
the mess that gave Gray Davis' job to the Terminator in the
first place  there wouldn't be any money for schools for the
little children. Mom knows better, and a Kennedy mom knows
best of all.

With the bond deal headed for the morgue, the Terminator
returned to his Brentwood home badly in need of wifely solace
and the gentle consolations of marital balm. Maria was waiting
with news that she had been talking to his lobbyist in
Sacramento and was ready to go with him to a conference
with the California congressional delegation in Palm Springs.

There she would huddle with Leon Panetta, who was Bill
Clinton's chief of staff. "I had a chance to talk to Maria," he
told the Los Angeles Times, "and I just stressed the
importance of the governor having to make a deal with the
[Democrats in the] legislature."

Having marshaled all the usual Democratic arguments
against frugality with taxpayer money, all she needed was the
ritual "me-too" from a doughty Republican. Enter George
Schultz, Ronald Reagan's secretary of state and now a
visiting fine fellow (well met) at the Hoover Institution at
Stanford. Surprise, surprise: He, too, told the governor to
take the Democratic deal.

With his spirits bucked up at last, the Terminator could
join his wife in a conference call with his aides, and they all
decided to make a final push for a deal on Democratic terms.
The Terminator returned to Sacramento on Monday morning
by himself. Maria had to stay home with a sick child, but by
Tuesday the child's fever, which had spiked at 104, was
down, and that's when Mom got back to Sacramento to make
her let's-all-play-nicely-together speech.

The Democrats allowed the Terminator a fig leaf in the form
of a "rainy-day fund" instead of a spending cap. This reserve
fund sets aside certain revenues for a future budget crisis,
but as a "compromise," it cost the Democrats nothing. Future
legislatures, which the Democrats confidently expect to
dominate, can choose to spend the money any way they
want.

Frittered away was the Terminator's opportunity to
intimidate the legislature with an appeal to the public while he
still has weight and heft, like the real Terminator. Instead, he
demonstrated that a Kennedy, even if she gets the genes
from a Kennedy mom, can still be a potent force in the
nation's politics. Lady MacBeth of Little Rock has a clone in
Los Angeles.